A Carlin Home Companion (5 page)

The Three Musketeers

I
N 1969 MY DAD DROPPED
acid for the first time—and the second time—and most probably the twenty-ninth time. As he would say about it years later, “LSD is a values changer.… And I was able to see I was in the wrong place.” He now saw very clearly that he was entertaining the wrong people. He was entertaining the parents of the people he actually wanted to be with.

When he went to do some shows at the Copacabana in New York City, things were what you might call … interesting. Some nights he did his act as usual, and then one night he just lay on the floor under the piano and described what he saw to the audience. Another night he brought the phone book out on stage and read from different sections. He was trying to get fired. They obliged.

Later that year he got hired to open for the Supremes in Las Vegas for twelve thousand dollars a week. The most money he had ever made in his life. It was enough money to reach his American Dream, which is what he'd
thought
he wanted. It was also enough money to put a deposit on a beautiful house in the San Fernando Valley, which is what my mom
definitely
wanted.

During the first show Dad did his new bit about the word “shit.” He said, “I don't say shit. Down the street Buddy Hackett says shit. Redd Foxx says shit. I don't say shit. I smoke a little of it, but I don't say it.” Some members of the audience apparently took offense at his act, and the Frontier Hotel told Dad, “You say, ‘Shit,' we say, ‘Fuck you.'”

Dad got fired. Mom lost her dream house.

And I began to sleep on the floor.

My mom and dad began to argue more and more about money, and all the changes that were happening. They did their best to argue only when I slept or when I wasn't around. But being an only child, I knew exactly what was going on whether I wanted to or not. I felt the reality—things were tense between them. My dad said that he knew in his gut that their fighting had become a problem for me when I started mysteriously sleeping on the floor in the hallway in the middle of the night. This troubled him deeply. But all he could do was try to spend as much quality time with me as possible to offset any consequences of the war brewing in the house.

Late one night my dad was packing to go out on the road. I was sitting on the floor watching him, fascinated. Because he went on the road so much, my dad was a champion packer. And because he was slightly OCD, he would have stacks of his things all around the dining room—shirts in one pile, socks folded neatly in another, underwear stacked, toiletries laid out precisely. It was a production. Being with him during these ordinary domestic moments meant the world to me. It was a chance to soak up some special “daddyness” before he would be gone for two or three weeks. So there I was soaking him up, when my mom came in and said sharply, “Kelly, it's time for bed.”

I looked up pleadingly. “Can't I stay up just a little longer, pretty please?”

Dad quickly chimed in, “C'mon, Bren. Let her stay up a little longer. It won't kill her. I'm going to be gone for three weeks.”

Mom set her jaw, looked at my dad, and said loudly, “Fine, I'll just be the only Carlin in this entire household who never, ever,
ever
gets what she wants!”

I knew what was coming, so I got up and headed toward my bedroom, hoping my obedience would quell any arguing. But as I did so, my mom lost her balance, tried to right herself, but couldn't, and fell backward into Dad's half-packed suitcase. I held my breath, waiting for her to lose it. My dad tensed, too, even as he rushed over to see if she was okay. But instead of rage or tears, she began to laugh. It wasn't a fuck-you laugh, but a loose, silly, oh-my-God-look-what-I-did laugh. And with that, Dad laughed, too. They laughed together. It was a laugh that said, “We're in love and see all the good in the world and each other.” It was the laugh of “Everything will be okay forever and ever.” Confused but thrilled, I began to laugh, too. I felt a thank-God-everyone-is-still-happy moment deep inside my chest.

Dad helped her up and out of the suitcase, and Mom straightened out her nightgown. As she did this, I saw something that I'd never noticed before—she was wobbly and couldn't really stand. She couldn't really speak right, and there was a sleepy look in her eyes. This wasn't my everyday mom, but someone else who spoke, acted, and felt different. And although I didn't really know what to call it at the time, it was very clear—she was drunk.

And there it was again, like the day her hair caught on fire: a ripple of threat in my young and sensitive being. However, this time it wasn't a tremor on my human seismograph, it was more like an earthquake. I was now very worried—
What if Dad is gone on the road and Mom is acting like this? Will she know how to take care of me?
And even worse, I thought—
What if Daddy gets really mad that Mommy is like this and he leaves forever?

My mother, the one I'd known my whole life, had disappeared before my very eyes.

But then Dad looked us both in the eye, put his arms around us, and said, “Come on, come on, group hug.” We all gathered in a circle and hugged. He then said, “Just remember, we are the Three Musketeers, all for one and one for all.”

That was the night the Carlins discovered the land of denial.

*   *   *

During the spring of 1970 my dad went into the hospital for a double hernia operation. He went in my daddy—a clean-cut man with groovy sideburns—and came home someone else—a man with a beard. A beard he would not shave for the rest of his life. I wasn't quite sure if this was really my daddy. This was very startling for me.

Mom was startled, too. Not so much by the beard, but by all the rest. Dad was ready to change everything. He was ready to walk away from the suits, the ties, and the audiences that didn't really understand him. This also meant walking away from the money that came with all that. To finally be able to fully express his truth, as many of his peers in music were doing, he was willing to risk everything. My mom was not as willing. All that she and Dad had worked for and sacrificed for the last nine years was at risk.

But even with her anxiety, which led to lots and lots of arguing for a few months, in the end she really did understand. She knew this change of direction for my dad was his “true north.” It might not be full of safety and security, but it was full of authenticity. And she understood what it felt like not to live authentically—she'd been doing it since she was a teenage girl. Plus Mom had always loved the “David vs. Goliath” fight, the us-against-them lifestyle. It's what made her feel alive when she first met my dad.

Yes, she had wanted the house in the Valley with the pool; yes, she loved having a successful husband; but she had also felt brushed aside the last five years because of that success. Something had died inside her. With Dad igniting a new vision for his life and work, something sparked in her, and she looked him square in the eye and said, “Let's go!”

*   *   *

Giving up on the white-bread version of the American Dream meant we were now going to live our own version of it. In the late fall of 1970, we moved out of Beverly Hills and into a three-bedroom apartment on Pacific Avenue near the Venice Canals. We were now living among “our” people—the freaks, bikers, and hippies of Venice Beach. It was a tough neighborhood, so the first week we lived there my dad taught me how to walk down the street like a New Yorker. “So, you know,” he explained in a thick New York accent, “no one will fuck with you.” He took this teeny wisp of a seven-year-old out onto the sidewalk in front of our building and showed me how to do this New York–style walking—head up, eyes front, walking like I had a place to go.

A few months after we moved in, I was awakened by a very large bang—like a truck had hit our apartment building. Before I knew it the whole place started to shake. I leaped out of bed and ran as fast as I could to my parents' room. The whole world kept shaking. I jumped into their bed, and Dad hovered above Mom and me so that if the roof caved in, he'd take the brunt of the damage. I don't know what was more traumatizing that morning—the 6.6 magnitude earthquake or the fact that as Dad protected us, I could see his balls.

When Dad wasn't on the road, he was in his office listening to albums, smoking weed (he was also growing a huge pot plant in there), and working on new material: It was something he now did with real fervor since he now had a new audience for it—college kids all across America. But unlike only a few years earlier, I no longer spent endless hours with him. I now hung around with my friends, a couple of girls I had befriended in the neighborhood. We ruled the back alleyway as only girls on pink-and-turquoise Schwinn Sting-Ray bikes could.

After school my best friend, Cheryl, and I could be found playing handball against the open walls of the apartment building's carport, and in the summer we were on the beach. These were the days when all you had to do was tell your mom where you were going and when you'd be home. Sometimes that would mean eight to ten hours of free-range playing. We roamed the canals—which back then had few houses and were mostly open space—built forts, sucked on honeysuckle, and sailed Popsicle-stick boats in the canals. I committed my first crime—I shoplifted an Abba-Zaba candy bar and a candle from Alan's Market. My life of crime was short, though. I felt too guilty to ever do it again. We also roamed the beaches all the way from the marina to the lifeguard station up near Venice Boulevard, ruling the swing sets, building sand castles, and gorging on candy. We were never hassled, bothered, nor molested. It must have been my New York walk.

When Mom was home, she was usually partying with her friends. My friend Cheryl's mom had become my mom's best friend, and they often went gallivanting out in the neighborhood together. I began to notice that my mom was drunk or high during the day more frequently, and her moods were all over the place—some days she was euphoric and others a bitch. She was now popping a rainbow of pills. I tried to predict what might set her off. Was it my room being messy? Or maybe it was my coming home a few minutes late? I couldn't figure it out. I didn't know how to act around her anymore, and so I began to pull away from her. I talked to her less, confided in her almost never, and generally avoided her. I became afraid of her and relied on my dad to be my only emotional foundation.

When she and Dad fought, which was more often and much louder than it used to be, I began to take my dad's side. I felt he was the more logical one, and so I would back him up. But this only made the atmosphere in the household worse. More and more often I found solace by disappearing into my bedroom, where I'd sink into a quiet and dark mood, or I'd flee out the door to find someone or something to distract myself.

When it was time for dinner, Mom was sometimes nowhere to be found, and I'd have to go look for her. One of her regular spots was a local bar called Hinanos. I'd lean just inside the doorway and yell, “Brenda Carlin! Are you here, Brenda Carlin?” When she was there, and not too deep into her Cutty Sarks, she'd come home to get dinner ready. But if she wasn't there, or if I saw that she was already drunk, I'd go home alone and make my new favorite thing—a Swanson's TV Dinner. Fried chicken or Salisbury steak were my favorites. (Though I must admit I could have done without the corn infiltrating my chocolate brownie, thank you very much.)

On those nights when Dad was in town and Mom had cooked a meal, the three of us would set up our TV trays in front of the big console and watch some shows together. Those were my favorite nights, because it felt like everything was right with our world. Mom and Dad loved the crime shows like
Mission: Impossible
,
Columbo,
and
Mannix.
But we were also fans of the animal shows like
The Wonderful World of Disney
and
Wild Kingdom,
because Dad would do the voices of all the animals. He'd pick a different voice for each animal and do funny dialogue, making Mom and me laugh hysterically.

Not only were we in a new neighborhood, but I was now going to a new school—Santa Monica Montessori. With my new school came a school-bus service, which my parents loved. They no longer needed to wake up early, or be sober enough to drive at eight in the morning! I, on the other hand, hated it. Since they didn't have to wake up to drive, they'd often sleep in, leaving me to wake myself up, eat breakfast, and get ready for the day. Increasingly I'd wake up to the bus honking in the alleyway. A dagger of anxiety would stab me in the stomach when I'd realize I was late again. Sometimes Millie, the bus driver, would wait the ten minutes while I scrambled into my clothes and grabbed a Pop-Tart for breakfast. But most of the time I'd wave her on and then have to wake my parents to take me to school. Mom or Dad would groggily stumble about, throw on some clothes, and drive me up to Santa Monica.

One morning I woke up for school and found both of my parents already awake, dressed, and in the kitchen. This confused me deeply.

“What's going on?” I asked.

What had happened was that my mom, who was now volunteering at the LA Free Clinic, had gone for a drink after work with a few coworkers, and on the way home she'd gotten pulled over by the cops. When they searched her purse, they found a bunch of loose pills.

She told them, “They're my medicine. I have a prescription at home. If you take me there, I'll prove it to you.”

And so they did. It was 2:00
A
.
M
. and my dad by this point was frantic and worried. He'd been up waiting, and in the meantime had rolled a nice joint to smoke. Just as he lit it, there was a knock at the door. “Thank God you're—” Instead of finding my mom at the door, he found two of LA's finest standing next to my mom in handcuffs. They quickly took my dad into custody, too, searched the apartment, and found the six-foot-tall pot plant growing in his office.